


In This Moment

by Caedmon



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Established Nine/Rose, Established Relationship, F/M, First Time, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Introspection, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-18 04:19:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7299301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caedmon/pseuds/Caedmon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Rose wanted to be with him. Not just now, not just in this moment, but always. She wanted to be his for as long as she lived - and with the research it seemed that he was doing, she may be able to stay with him for a lot longer than she’d expected. It didn’t matter to her. There was no question in her mind that she wanted to be with him. When she’d been with Jimmy and Mickey, there had always been a tiny, niggling little voice at the back of her mind that made her question just how fully committed she was to them, made her question her love for them. </i>
</p><p>  <i>Not so with the Doctor. She knew, without hesitation, that he was it for her. He was her endgame. He was all she’d ever wanted, all she’d ever want for as long as she lived: be it fifty years, five hundred or five thousand.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goingtothetardis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goingtothetardis/gifts).



> This is a prompt fill for goingtothetardis who won the grand prize in my fic giveaway! Her prompt was: _9/R he’s asleep in the library and Rose walks in and finds him passed out on the couch, she’s never seen him sleeping before, so she sits and watches him, because he looks so peaceful, and maybe he mumbles her name? and something else that makes her blush, and maybe she goes over to him on the sofa and touches his face and…_
> 
> Upon further discussion, she also told me to let the muse take me where the muse went, so I did that, but like to think I stayed pretty true to the original prompt. :) Chapter 1 can be read as a G-rated one-shot, chapter 2 takes a turn for the smutty. 
> 
> Hope you like it, sweetie! 
> 
> A few notes:  
> ~I own some cool things, but Doctor Who is not one of them. I do, however, own all of the mistakes. This is unbeta'd.  
> ~Comments and kudos feed the muse, and are incredibly appreciated! Thank you from the bottom of my cold, black, shriveled little heart.  
> ~come say hi! caedmonfaith.tumblr.com

Rose woke, drifting out of sleep, and rolled over to what had become the Doctor’s side of the bed. She threw out an arm for him but grasped only rumpled covers and a cold pillow. That wasn’t altogether unusual: he rarely stayed the whole night with her, and in the weeks since they’d confessed a romantic attraction to each other and started sharing a bed, she’d grown used to falling asleep with him curled around her only to wake with nothing at her back. She shouldn’t be surprised, and she wasn’t. But she couldn’t help feel a little prickle of disappointment. 

She sat up and rubbed her eyes, looking around the room. The TARDIS, without any prompting from Rose, raised the lights to low so that she could see a little without the bright, harsh glare of sudden light. 

The Doctor’s jumper and trousers were still neatly folded and his jacket still lay placidly across the back of her chair. Unusual, that. It implied that he may be coming back, that he hadn’t left her for good. A bright flash of hope shone within her for just a moment before she tamped it down. 

Rose looked at the clock beside her bed and smiled a little at its presence. The Doctor had, predictably, rolled his eyes at her when she’d insisted that she wanted it there, wanted the connection to her former life. The leather of his jacket had creaked under his crossed arms while he smirked. She’d stubbornly told him that she needed some sense of normalcy in this mad life they led, traveling through time and space. He had indulged her, but only after she paid the price of a barely-concealed smile and a muttered ‘silly little ape’. She’d rewarded him with a smile of her own, her tongue in the corner of her mouth, the way she knew he’d liked even then, before the truth of their feelings for each other came out. 

According to the glowing blue lights that indicated the time her body recognized, it was 4:42am. Too early to be awake, but she suspected that she’d not be able to get back to sleep now. She’d grown accustomed to spooning with the Doctor to drift off in the last couple of weeks, him holding her and kissing her until sleep took her, and she didn’t think she’d be able to go back to sleep by herself. Resigning herself to a painfully early morning, she got up, groaning, and padded toward her spacious en suite for her morning routine. With her bladder relieved, teeth brushed and hair combed, she started towards the galley to seek out a cuppa, still in her sleep shorts and cami. 

The Doctor wasn’t in there as she’d hoped, but Rose fixed her cuppa anyway. She elected not to fix the Doctor any, owing to the fact that she didn’t know where he was and didn’t want to drag an extra mug all over the TARDIS until she found him, only to deliver a cold cup of tea to him. She put the milk back in the fridge and set out into the corridor with her own mug, intending to head back to her room. 

Her room wasn’t there, however, the entrance to the library was. She gave the coral wall a quizzical look but shrugged and went in, figuring she could pull up a film and perhaps doze on the couch for a little while until the Doctor found her. 

Instead, she found the Doctor. 

He was asleep on the wide couch, books scattered around him. One lay open, spread on his chest as if he’d succumb to sleep in the middle of reading. She peeked at the title: _Forever Young._ Rose raised an eyebrow at that, wondering if the Doctor had picked up a novel. She glanced at some of the titles of the other books stacked on the coffee table and floor, and was surprised by what she saw. They all bore similar titles: _A Treatise on the Extension of Life: Cheating the Reaper, Defying Death,_ and _Augmenting Existence_. 

Rose’s eyebrows shot up. The Doctor was nine hundred years old, but he didn’t look it. Surely he wasn’t seeking…

An idea rooted in her mind, took hold, and she felt warmth bloom within her. Since they confessed their mutual feelings for each other, they’d talked at length about her short life span, and she knew how much it concerned him. It concerned them both, actually. She couldn’t stand the thought of leaving him alone after she died, or aging while he had to watch, helpless to stop it. The guilt clawed at her, and had stayed both their hands when it came to advancing their relationship beyond where it was - a step beyond platonic, a step below lovers.

But if he was researching how to keep her with him, it have her an incredible amount of hope. Her Doctor was brilliant. If there was a way - any way - he’d find it. She had no doubt at all in her mind. Her faith in him was unshakable. 

Rose smiled around a sip of tea and allowed herself the luxury of watching him sleep for a moment, a sight she’d never seen. His brow was smooth, the crinkles by his eyes were missing. His dark eyelashes lay crescents against his cheeks, and his lids concealed the bright blue of the eyes she loved so much. One long-fingered hand lay across the top of his chest, near his collarbones, and the other rested gently on the copy of _Forever Young_ he’d apparently fallen asleep reading. His ankles and bare feet peeked out from below the legs of the plaid pajama pants he’d worn when he went with her to bed earlier. 

Her heart swelled and thudded at the sight of him so relaxed and peaceful. Even when he was his happiest, even when they were snogging and he pulled away to smile at her beatifically with his eyes bright and full of unspoken love for her, even when they curled on this very couch together in the evenings under the pink blanket he’d bought her on the planet Ram after she complained about the cold in the library just one time, he wasn’t ever this relaxed. There was always a tension in him, a certain quality that suggested he was waiting for something to happen, that he was on guard, waiting to be taken by surprise and determined not to be caught unprepared by the inevitable. 

But now… For now he was at peace. He seemed softer somehow, with his body at ease and his face slackened. Comfortable. 

Rose wanted to be with him. Not just now, not just in this moment, but always. She wanted to be his for as long as she lived - and with the research it seemed that he was doing, she may be able to stay with him for a lot longer than she’d expected. It didn’t matter to her how long she had; there was no question in her mind that she wanted to be with him. When she’d been with Jimmy and Mickey, there had always been a tiny, niggling little voice at the back of her mind that made her question just how fully committed she was to them, made her question her love for them. 

Not so with the Doctor. She knew, without hesitation, that he was it for her. He was her endgame. He was all she’d ever wanted, all she’d ever want for as long as she lived: be it fifty years, five hundred or five thousand.

A yawn took her, and she arched her back into a stretch. She could think about the ramifications of his research later, what it would mean for her life, his life and their lives together. For now, she wanted to be with him here, in this moment, on that large, cozy couch. In this moment, she didn’t want anything else out of her life but the comfort his body provided. In this moment, she wanted him beside her and around her. She wanted to feel safe, secure and loved by him - the way she always felt in his arms. 

Rose sat the mug of tea down on the coffee table by the books and stepped over to him, ever-so-gently extricating _Forever Young_ from beneath his hand. He stirred a little, his brow creasing for a moment and he muttered something unintelligible. He shifted on the couch, turning slightly onto his side, and Rose smiled. That suited her purposes better anyway. 

She pulled her pink blanket from the back of the couch and spread it over his bare feet, then situated herself beside him on the wide couch, pulling the blanket up over both their bodies as she lay down. 

The Time Lord stirred again, turning towards her even more and extending his arms, an automatic gesture. Rose nestled into them in an equally natural manner, resting her head on his right arm and sighing contentedly when his left arm draped itself around her. She nuzzled into his t-shirt-clad chest, breathing in his warm, comforting scent, and smiled when he kissed her hair in his half-asleep state. 

“Rose,” he murmured. 

“I’m here, Doctor,” she whispered. “Sleep now. I’ll be here when you wake.”

“Good.”

Rose smiled again, content in this moment, sure she’d be content with him forever, and let his double heartbeat lull her back to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He figured he should probably be upset about being discovered, but the truth was that he was sure he’d found an answer - at least a temporary one - before sleep had taken him. It had been the peace of knowing that he’d be able to keep her with him as long as she consented that had let him relax enough to sleep. He’d intended to go back to her, but he’d gotten caught up reading the specifics of the methodology, and the peace of mind that had flooded him had eased him into a long-overdue slumber before he’d been able to leave and make his way back to her bed._
> 
> _So Rose, his impossible, precious girl, had come to him instead._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So my pen did a thing. Let's play the good news/bad news game. 
> 
> The bad news is that this chapter is smut-less. The good news is that there is going to be another chapter, it's already partially written, and it should have the anticipated sexytimes in it. I'm not going to end this story without the smut, I promise. But my pen keeps doing things.
> 
> I wasn't expecting this story to have any real plot, it was just going to be fluff with some smut added in. But like I said, my pen did a thing and here we are. 
> 
> Honestly, I love it when my pen does a thing.

The Doctor woke and swam up from the warm recesses of sleep, immediately aware of the warm bundle in his arms, snoring lightly against his chest. He smiled without even opening his eyes and brought his head down so that Rose’s head was cradled under his chin while he took advantage of his heightened senses and superior memory to suss out where they were and how they got there - still unwilling to open his eyes and break the spell of the moment. 

He took a deep breath, inhaling through his nose, taking in the scents that surrounded him. Rose’s smell was prevalent, the floral tones of her shampoo and cherry-almond of her lotion tickling his nose in the pleasant way it always did. Just behind that, he could smell the smoky aroma of a banked fire and the stale, almost spicy scent of old books. 

The library, then. But why? Memories came back online and he remembered slipping out of the warmth of Rose’s bed to come down here and continue his clandestine research project. He hadn’t intended to tell her about that, but if he’d fallen asleep while reading he supposed he’d been found out. Unless the TARDIS had cleaned up after him, which he doubted. 

He figured he should probably be upset about being discovered, but the truth was that he was sure he’d found an answer - at least a temporary one - before sleep had taken him. It had been the peace of knowing that he’d be able to keep her with him as long as she consented that had let him relax enough to sleep. He’d intended to go back to her, but he’d gotten caught up reading the specifics of the methodology, and the peace of mind that had flooded him had eased him into a long-overdue slumber before he’d been able to leave and make his way back to her bed. 

So Rose, his impossible, precious girl, had come to him instead. 

He hugged her to him a little tighter, thanking the heavens and whoever was up there for this little slip of a human in his arms. She’d healed him, made him better, made him whole again...and even more than that. Better, more complete than he’d ever been. He’d never be able to forgive himself for the sins of his past, but with Rose by his side, he was almost able to believe that he could be the man she believed he was. Almost.

He finally opened his eyes and leaned his head back to look at her, to take her in. She was lovely. Beauty incarnate, compassion corporeal, and he marveled that the universe not only created something as wonderful as her, it saw fit to give her to the likes of him. 

They’d been travelling together for quite a while now, but he’d only let himself acknowledge what she meant to him recently. Nevermind everyone else pointing out to them constantly that they acted like more than just best mates, what with the way they couldn’t keep their hands off each other, or him letting the way he felt spill out whenever his mouth got ahead of his brain like it had multiple times, most notably in Downing Street. He’d stubbornly refused to let himself accept that he was in love with her, his fear keeping him from hoping. 

Rose, bless her, with the impetuousness of youth and the impatience of humanity, had had no such qualms, and had finally grown tired of his hot-and-cold routine. She’d simply told him, baldly, that she was in love with him and if that was a problem, he needed to take her home. 

Well, it was certainly a problem, but he’d as soon snog a bilge snipe, marry a Dalek and then bury himself alive before he ever even thought about taking her home. As far as he was concerned, she _was_ home, and he had no intentions of letting her leave. 

In light of her confession and before he could stop himself, he’d had his fingers buried in her hair and his lips pressed against hers. He hadn’t looked back. They were together now; for better or worse, the die was cast. 

But he was hesitant, and as much as his body rebelled against the idea, he’d insisted on taking things slow. He wanted forever with her - not just this all-too-brief moment of her lifespan - and he was determined to find that forever. He couldn’t explain it and barely even tried, but it felt like the future depended on what they did now, in these moments, and how they reacted to each other; that they were creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they jumped into this thing headlong and acted as if there may not be a next moment, they were tempting fate to prove them right. If they took things slow and acted as if they had all the time in the world, then that would be the outcome. Their actions dictated their future. 

Words didn’t come easily in this body sometimes, but he’d tried to express that to Rose and felt he’d failed. She seemed to understand anyway. He felt her mild frustration (that paled next to his own considerable frustration), but she didn’t ask anything of him other than he come into her room and hold her until she went to sleep at night. He could hardly say no to that, so he didn’t. She didn’t push him. 

He pushed himself, though. 

Every night for the past two weeks and three days since he began sharing her bed, he’d slipped away not long after she drifted off and retired to the library to research ways to keep her with him longer than her ephemeral lifespan would allow. He hadn’t slept in weeks, devoting that time instead to his desperate search until, last night, he’d hit pay dirt. If what he’d learned was correct and she agreed, she’d be able to stay with him for years - centuries - longer, if she wanted. They’d be together. 

If she wanted. 

If she wanted more than this fleeting moment of her life with him, he could give it to her. And he would. He’d give her everything. 

Rose stirred in his arms and he loosened his hold on her to give her room to move. To his delight, she only snuggled more securely into his embrace and murmured his name. He smiled, bringing his lips down to her tousled hair and pressing a soft kiss there. 

“Sleep, love,” he whispered. 

She stirred again at the pressure of his mouth and his words, and brought her head back from his chest to blink up at him sleepily. “Doctor?”

“You were expecting someone else?” he answered, cheeky but quiet. 

She gave him a drowsy smile and closed her eyes again, nuzzling into to his arm that supported her head. He kissed her forehead and pulled the pink blanket back up over her shoulders. 

“Go back to sleep, love.”

“Mmm. Don’t wanna.”

He chuckled. “Sweet little apes need their sleep.”

“Not me,” she retorted, sounding more alert despite her still-closed eyes. “This little ape wants to be with you.”

“You’ve got me, love.”

She smiled again and turned her head to kiss his bicep. The Doctor rested his head against the pillow, looking down at her. She certainly did have him. She had all of him. 

“What’d you find out?” she asked.

“Hmm?”

“All these books. They’re all about extending life, yeah? You’re trying to keep me with you longer.”

 _That’s my clever girl,_ he thought with no small amount of pride. 

“They are.”

“What’d you find out?” she repeated.

He thought for a few moments before he answered, weighing his words. “I’m hopeful,” he finally said. 

She opened her eyes to look up at him. “You think you can make me live longer?”

“If what I read in the books is true, I can.” He waited a beat before he went on. “If you want.”

“Of course I want, Doctor. I want to stay with you forever,” she replied, her tone implying she was explaining something very simple that he should already know. 

He dared to hope. “Do you really?”

She grinned, but rolled her eyes. “You’re ridiculous. Of course I do. I want to stay with you forever,” she told him.

“Forever is a long time, Rose,” he reminded her. 

She pulled back a little, sitting up a bit, the blanket falling off her shoulder and her topaz eyes boring into his. “I realize I don’t have the same grasp of time that you have, Doctor,” she began. “I don’t know how long I’ll have left, no matter what you figure out or what we do. But whether it’s five years, fifty or five hundred, I want to spend whatever time I have left with you. I love you.”

He was flabbergasted. He’d suspected, he’d hoped, but he’d never dreamed...her declaration of love struck him directly between the hearts the way it always did and he drew a deep, shuddering breath. He pulled her forward much as he had that first night, catching her lips with his and claiming them in a searing kiss. She gave as good as she got, and the two of them let their lips and tongues say what needed saying without forming actual words. 

When it occurred to him that she needed to breathe, he released her mouth and pulled her back down into his arms. “Oh, my precious girl,” he marveled out loud. 

“You have a solution, then?” she pressed him, still a little breathless. 

He nodded. “Yes. There’s something we can do, at least for the moment, until we find a more permanent solution.” 

He didn’t say anything else for a while, and Rose nudged him. “Well? What is it?”

“There’s an herb on the planet Esac. When brewed and ingested, it stops cellular degeneration. It would stop you from aging,” he explained. 

“So I’d never grow old?”

“As long as you’re regularly drinking the tea, no. If you stop drinking the tea, you’ll age just as you normally would, perhaps even a little slower as a lingering aftereffect of the tea you’ve already ingested. So if something happened and you couldn’t drink it every day for a while, if we were put in prison for a couple of weeks or something, that would be okay. It’s ideal to drink it every day, but not a necessity.” 

Rose pressed against his chest with her small hands. “Well? What are we waiting for? Let’s go get it!”

A happy laugh rumbled through the Doctor’s chest underneath her hands. He just couldn’t help it. She was so impatient and silly sometimes, his little ape. 

“No I don’t think so,” he drawled, still grinning, settling his arms more firmly around her. “I think I’d prefer to stay here for a while, ta. Rather comfy, me.”

“Oh, you’re impossible,” Rose complained, but there was no bite to it. 

“Nah, just improbable. ‘Sides, why would I want to get up when I have an armful of warm, snuggly Rose Tyler?”

 

He bent his head and nuzzled the join of her shoulder and neck, using his nose to push her hair out of his way, spreading his hands on her back and letting his pinky and ring fingers slip under the waistband of her sleep shorts. 

Rose gasped, and he grinned against the column of her neck. “What?” he asked, all innocent and beguiling. 

“You’re getting mighty fresh, mister.” He was ridiculously pleased to hear the breathy quality in her voice. 

“That’s ‘ _Doctor_ ’,” he teased her, “and yeah, I am. Problem?” He kissed the bit of skin that covered her pulse and took an obscene amount of pleasure in the speed of the fluttering he felt below his lips. On a hunch, he took a deep sniff and chuckled wickedly. He could smell her arousal and the pheromones she was dumping into the air around them the same way he’d shoved boxes at the Boston Tea Party. He kissed her again, trailing his lips from her pulse point to the little hollow behind her ear while he let his hands go on a bit of a wander, one sliding down to grip her bum, kneading it possessively and the other skimming up her back to splay across the warm expanse of skin there, massaging gently, coaxing. 

“Doctor,” she whimpered.

“Yes, love?”

“I thought you wanted to wait?”

He nipped her earlobe and she drew a shuddering breath. He felt her fingernails dig into his shoulder, clutching him closer. To provoke a reaction from her, he ground his hips into her, letting her feel just what she was doing to him. 

“Found what I was looking for,” he murmured against her collarbone, and her little giggle told him that his double entendre had hit the mark. “Genius, me,” he bragged, nipping the thin skin that covered her clavicle and letting his hand roam down to the back of her thigh, pulling it over his own. 

“But what if… _oooh_... But what if we can’t find the herb? Or what if it doesn’t work?”

The Doctor tried to ignore her. “Rose…” 

“Believe me, Doctor. I want this,” she gave a little roll of her hips that nearly had him whimpering. “ _Believe me_ , I do.”

“So let’s.” He went back to her neck and set to work. 

“We can’t.”

He pulled back to look at her. “We can’t? I assure you, we can.”

“We can’t,” she reiterated. “Or rather, we _shouldn’t_. Not yet. It’s like you said, I’m afraid of tempting fate. I don’t want the universe to take this away from us. I meant what I told you...I want forever, not just this moment. And if we give in to this moment, without guaranteeing forever as best we can…”

He fought back a growl of frustration and lowered his head to her shoulder. She was right. Of course she was right. She usually was. But he tugged her thigh again, pulling her heat right where he needed it. She was _right there_...

“Doctor!” she squeaked. 

He blew out a long breath, then started redirecting his hormones that would take care of his straining erection, releasing his grip on her leg, stroking it in a long ellipse instead. 

“You’re right, Rose.” He gave her a soft kiss that quickly turned more carnal and undid all of the hormonal work he’d just done. With an extreme force of will, he pulled away and planted one last kiss to her forehead. “Of course you’re right. Go get ready. We’ll go get the herb and you can start the tea.”

“Now?”

“Right now,” he growled.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He dipped his head and rescued her lip from her teeth, tasting it for himself, letting his hands skate back down her body. Forever shimmered around them for the first time, and he felt the golden web of timelines shifting. Timelines that had previously been broken off now extended farther than he could see, twined with his in a double helix._
> 
> _It was a heady, joyous feeling, and left him a little dizzy._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter beta'd by tenroseforeverandever

Despite his declaration that they should go get ready and disembark immediately, the two of them had lingered in the library a while longer. Rose dozed with her head in the Doctor’s lap while he did a bit more research on the herb they were going to find - esutan - and the planet Esac where it was located. Rose sighed multiple times from the sheer bliss of the Doctor absently playing with her hair as he read. 

The trip to Esac had been summarily uneventful; esutan grew there like a weed, and they had no trouble finding it. The Doctor explained that he’d landed them at a time in the planet’s history where colonists weren’t expected to arrive for another four centuries, so they had an entire planet’s worth of the life-giving herb available to them and _only_ them for four hundred years - a nearly inexhaustible amount. 

Rose was pleasantly surprised to find that the plant was pretty and smelled nice: it had little orange blooms on it and a light citrus scent. He told her that when dried, the blooms turned red and the leaves yellowed. When brewed, the leaves would turn purple and the brew itself would smell a bit like licorice. Rose didn’t mind. She liked licorice. They left the planet with eight large baskets full. The Doctor said that should be enough to last them for several months.

They sat at the table in the galley after dinner, each sipping from their favorite mugs and casting the other covert little looks, smiling when they caught each other’s glance. 

“How’s the tea?” the Doctor asked. 

“It’s good,” Rose told him, swallowing a sip. “Could do with a bit of honey. I think that’d be better than sugar. Would that be alright?”

He shrugged. “Don’t see why not. Shouldn’t interfere with the chemicals, but I’ll check to be sure.”

“Ta.” Rose took another swallow and caught his eye over the rim of her mug. She flushed a little at the heat she saw in his eyes before he looked away. She drained her mug, then sat it down in front of her. “So how long before we know if it’s working?”

“We’re headed to the medbay now.” He stood, gathering both their mugs and taking them to the sink. 

“We’ll know something this soon?”

“We should at least have some preliminary data right away, yeah. Enough to be getting on with,” he said without looking at her, and Rose bit her lip when she saw the tips of his ears turning pink. 

“Right then. Lead the way, Doctor.”

~*~O~*~

The Doctor was a bundle of nerves as he loaded the little vial of Rose’s blood into the centrifuge. So much was riding on the results of the tests he was performing. He couldn’t help but feel that all of his happiness was spinning with incredible speed just in front of him, and lay in the answers that would come in three minutes time. 

He turned back to Rose to find her sitting on the exam table where he had left her, picking at the bandage he’d put over the little needle wound he’d made when he drew the necessary blood. 

“Alright?” he asked. 

She smiled at him. “I’m fine. Nervous.”

“Feeling anything unusual?”

Rose shrugged. “Maybe a little warm, but I doubt that has anything to do with the tea.” She gave him a significant look, and he felt himself flush a little.

“I’m a little warm, too,” he confessed. 

“How long before we know?”

“Two minutes, fourteen seconds.”

She groaned. “That seems like an eternity.”

“I know,” he agreed. “But it’s not really that long.”

“So what happens now?” 

“We get the results, and then we go to bed.” 

Rose quirked an eyebrow at him, and he flushed a little more. 

“Not...that’s not what I meant.”

Rose laughed. “I know that’s not what you meant. I just like to tease you.”

“Minx.”

She touched her tongue to the corner of her mouth and he turned away from her. He had to, before he knocked her back onto the table and had his way with her right there. 

“We’ll do whatever you want, Doctor. Maybe you could read to me? We haven’t read _A Tale of Two Cities_ in a while.”

“If that’s what you want,” he answered quietly. He had absolutely no intention of reading to her tonight, and she knew it. But discussing reading was passing the time, and -

_*ding*_

The Doctor spun back around to his equipment and took the vial from the centrifuge. He slipped it into another machine and pressed a couple of buttons, then brought his eyes down to a microscope. He peered at it closely, narrowing his eyes, then reached up to the side of the machine and turned the knob to adjust the focus. 

“Doctor? What is it?”

“Bit of hush, love.”

He looked again, checking and rechecking, then sat back from the machine, letting out a long breath and putting his hands on his lap, not moving for a moment. 

The Doctor heard Rose get to her feet behind him, take a step towards him, and put her hand on his shoulder. “Doctor? Is it - oh!”

He’d surprised her when he sprang to his feet and pulled her into his arms, putting one arm behind her back and the other behind her legs to support her in a bridal carry. Rose threw her arms around his neck and stared at him with wide eyes for a moment before she gave him a coquettish grin. 

“Good news, I take it?”

He smiled at her brilliantly, knowing he probably looked incredibly goofy and not caring. “The best.” Then he caught that tongue, that teasing tongue, between his lips and snogged her soundly. 

The Doctor (quite unwillingly) released Rose’s mouth in order to carry her to the nearest bedroom. Rose took the loss of his kiss in stride, applying her own lips to his neck, his chin, his cheek, his ear. He growled in frustration, wanting to be at their destination _now_ , and almost cried out with relief when the door to his bedroom appeared just a few steps ahead. 

_Their_ bedroom now, as far as he was concerned. 

The TARDIS, bless her, had opened the door a couple of inches and all he had to do was push it open with his foot so he was able to go back to his recently-discovered favorite activity, which was kissing Rose. He got lost in the feel of her tongue against his, her fingers carding his short hair before it occurred to him to kick the door closed behind him and set Rose down. He didn’t release her lips, however, nor did he let his hands leave her. 

Rose pulled away for some air, and he started a trail down her neck, plucking at the fabric of her vest top.

“Doctor?”

He didn’t remove his lips from the hollow of her throat, spoke against it instead. “Yes, love?”

“Did the results -”

“Your cellular degeneration has slowed to a crawl. With regular ingestion, it will stop. And you’ll be with me forever.” He went back to nipping at her collarbone. 

Rose let out a sigh, then bit her lip. “So we’re...we’re about to…”

“Oh, yes.”

“Good.”

Her hands went to his chest and slid up towards his shoulders, pushing his jacket off. He let go of her back and bum long enough to let it slide to the ground with a satisfying thud. As soon as his hands were free of the jacket, he had them back on Rose, reveling in her warmth beneath the skin of his hands. One hand slid around her back, pulling her against him and the other threaded through her hair, gripping her face close to his, his mouth moving against hers hungrily, desperate for more of the taste of her - now that he knew he could have it. 

Rose brought her hands down to the hem of his jumper and plucked at it, but the Doctor pushed them away, lowering his head to nuzzle her neck. He skimmed his hands up her sides, slowly raising her shirt, bunching it on his wrists as his hands glided up her smooth skin. Her skin erupted into gooseflesh under his touch, and he beamed against her shoulder at the bumpy sensation, proud of his ability to affect her in such a way. 

He tugged her shirt over her head and up her arms until he flicked it away from her raised hands with a single motion and no regard for where it landed. His calloused hands began a slow descent down her body while he drank in the sight of her, nearly bare before him. He could scarcely wait for the slide of her skin against his and the inevitable feel of the spark of electricity that arched and buzzed between them every time they touched, even now between his hands and the place on her back where he fiddled with the fastening of her bra 

When she was able, she lowered her arms to circle his neck, letting her fingertips scratch lightly through the short hair she found there, watching him with dark eyes, her lip caught between her teeth. 

“You’re so beautiful, Rose,” he told her when his hands landed on at her sides and his thumbs started grazing her nipples. “I know that sounds trite, but I don’t know what else to say.”

“Say you love me,” she whispered. “Say you’re mine. Say you will be, forever. Not just this moment.”

He didn’t say anything right away. Instead, he brought his hands up to cup her cheeks and caught her lips, kissing her sweetly. When she whimpered and sagged against him, he released her mouth. 

“It’s not just this moment, love. This moment is just the beginning of eternity. I’ll be loving you until time has no meaning, until the universe has expanded to nothing, until every sun has burned itself out. You’ll see love reflected in my eyes until the life goes out of them, and when that finally happens, hundreds or thousands of years from now, I’ll still love you in whatever afterlife awaits us.”

A single tear splashed onto Rose’s cheek, and he brushed it away with his thumb. “Don’t cry, precious girl.”

“Can’t help it,” she sniffled. “You just make me so happy, Doctor.”

“I love you, Rose,” he whispered, bringing his forehead against hers and rolling it a little. “So much.”

“I love you, too.”

“May I take you to bed?”

She bit her lip and smiled up at him through her lashes. “Please.”

He dipped his head and rescued her lip from her teeth, tasting it for himself, letting his hands skate back down her body. Forever shimmered around them for the first time, and he felt the golden web of timelines shifting. Timelines that had previously been broken off now extended farther than he could see, twined with his in a double helix.

It was a heady, joyous feeling, and left him a little dizzy.

She tightened her arms around his neck, bringing him closer to her, and he closed what little distance remained between them by pulling her flush against his body. Rose gasped into his mouth when his erection pressed against her belly, and it occurred to him that that would feel much more brilliant if there weren’t so many clothes between them; he longed to feel her skin against his. 

It occurred to him, too, through his lust-addled brain that he’d asked to take her to bed and she’d said ‘yes’, but the bed was still frustratingly across the room. 

Well, he could fix that. 

He slid his hands down her back, over her bum, crouching a little until he reached the backs of her thighs. He pulled up, lifting her off the ground, and Rose followed his lead, instinctively wrapping her legs around his waist as he carried her across the room. He never released her mouth or surrendered the dance of their tongues as he carried her; he relied on the centuries of experience crossing his bedroom to lead him where he wanted to go. 

When his knees hit the bed, the Doctor still didn’t release her; instead he climbed onto the bed so that he could walk her to the middle on his knees before laying her down gently, reverently. He raised himself above her long enough to pull his jumper off before he collapsed back down onto his elbows to hover above her, feeling the urgency to touch her, to claim her rising. 

His open mouth hovered above hers, and her warm breath, the air from her lungs, ghosted against his lips. He gazed into her eyes, and there was something of a plea in the topaz depths. 

“Rose…I want-”

“Yes.”

He was surprised, but shouldn’t have been. “You’d just let me?”

“Anything, Doctor. I’m all yours. Everything.”

The Doctor closed his mouth over hers then, kissing and biting lightly, taking his time and enjoying her responses before he pulled off and brought his lips to her jaw.

“You taste amazing,” he whispered into her ear, just before he sucked her earlobe between his lips and nibbled it. 

Rose whimpered and undulated beneath him, a blatant invitation, and he released her ear when she brought her still-clothed heat right where he needed it. Surging to his knees, he began to tear at his belt buckle and watched Rose with hooded eyes as she started on the button and zip of her own pants, shoving them down and out of the way, just as he did the same with his. When she sat up to pull them off of her feet, he helped her, and gently pushed her back down to the bed and followed her down, reclaiming her mouth.

She brought her hands up to his shoulders, clutching him, pulling him close, and looped one leg around the back of his thigh to pull him in, towards her. He felt his control straining the leash and knew that he wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer. His need for her was too great. 

The Doctor brought his hand down between them, finding her wet curls and dragging a finger up her slit. She was incredibly wet, ready for him, and he growled low in his throat, closing his eyes to keep from surging into her like some kind of animal. 

“Rose,” he stammered out her name with as much control as he had left. “We have forever, now. And later, we’ll do anything you want. We’ll experiment, we’ll play. I’ll make any and every fantasy you’ve ever had come true, and we’ll come up with some new ones on our own. But right now...right now, I just need you, love. I need you so bad.”

She rolled her hips, and he felt her damp heat against his steely cock. “So take me,” she murmured against his adam’s apple, then nipped it. “Take me, Doctor, I’m yours.”

He snapped.

The Doctor took just a moment to line himself up, marveling again at just how wet she was for him. All for him, only for him. With a low moan, almost a sob, he pressed himself into her. 

Rose threw her head back, and he didn’t deny himself the offering of her bare neck. He bent his head to worship the expanse of soft skin there, nibbling and sucking as he pulled out and thrust in again. She made little sounds of pleasure and clutched his shoulders with every plunge and retreat. 

“More.”

He could certainly accommodate that. Would be more of a hardship not to, honestly. 

He sped up, setting a pace that was almost what he needed, loving the babble of filthy encouragements that fell from Rose’s lips like rain. 

“You like that, my love?”

“More, please, Doctor. Please, more…”

“Can’t,” he told her, and tried not to sound breathless. “Too much more, and this will end too quickly.”

“You said it yourself, we have forever. We can go again, just _please_ ,” she whined, wrapping her legs around his waist, giving him a little more depth. He moaned and sped up, much to Rose’s squealing delight. 

Too much, it was all too much, and he was losing control. His hips snapped harder and faster in an increasingly erratic rhythm, his body trembling with love and lust, and the hot coil of impending orgasm settled itself low in his torso. He reached down between them to stroke Rose’s clit, determined that she go over the edge of this cliff before him, that she feel as much pleasure as he was feeling and sooner...refusing to take even the slightest risk that she might not join him. 

She let out a series of keening cries, punctuated by the impact of his hips against hers, and clenched around him. “Close,” she whined. “So close, Doctor, so close….please…”

He swore, rubbing her in desperate little circles, near to pleading. 

Rose came, crying out inarticulately. He removed his hand and bracketed her shoulders with his arms, snapping his hips into her, burying his cock into her over and over as she clenched and fluttered around him, crying out his name and pleading. 

One, two, three thrusts more and he erupted into her with a shout, feeling timelines click into place as he juddered to a stop within her and lowered his forehead to her shoulder, panting and savoring the feeling of eternity that cocooned them. 

“I love you,” she whispered, stroking one hand all over his back and the other scratching the short hairs at the back of his neck. “I love you, I love you so much, Doctor.”

“My Rose,” he breathed, then turned his head to kiss her cheek. “My Rose, forever.”

~*~O~*~

They lay together hours later, snuggled together in the depths of their bed. Neither had slept, neither had wanted to. To surrender to sleep would end this beautiful, perfect moment of their first time together, and neither was willing to do that without a fight. 

But Rose’s time in the moment was fading fast, and the Doctor knew it wouldn’t be long before she would be sleeping peacefully against him. 

“Will it always be like this?” she asked, repositioning herself a little in what he suspected was a mostly futile attempt to keep herself awake. 

“Like what, love?”

“Perfect.”

He smiled up at the canopy of their bed and traced his fingertips up and down her arm one time in a long ellipse. “It’s you and me, Rose. We’re bound to have rows, there are times we won’t like each other. But I’ll love you to distraction every moment of every day, no matter what.”

“No matter what…” Rose murmured, her words heavy with sleep.

The Doctor turned his head just enough to kiss her hair, softly, so as not to wake her. 

“No matter what,” he whispered in reassurance. 

Rose stilled beside him, and he lay quiet beside her, letting her settle into her slumber, basking in this perfect, flawless moment.


End file.
